Canada has signed an inter-governmental agreement with the US, implementing FATCA in Canada. As a result, more than 155,000 Canadian tax records were delivered from Canadian banks to CRA, which in September 2015 turned them over to the IRS, circumventing Canadian privacy legislation. Most of the holders of these accounts are ordinary Canadian citizens, whose only crime (as Mr. McKenna notes) is being born in the US to Canadian parents or who otherwise have only tenuous connections with the US. Under the agreement, the Government of Canada plans to turn over Canadian financial information to the IRS annually.

This agreement was implemented by the former Conservative government, over the objections of opposition parties, including the Liberals. Now that the Liberals are in power, they reversed themselves and now insist they have no choice but to obey US demands.

The Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty (ADCS) has launched a lawsuit against the Government of Canada, opposing this agreement. The plaintiffs are two Canadian women born in the US to Canadian parents and brought back to Canada age 5 years.

Rather than focusing on the number of “purported tax evaders” that may be revealed by the leak of information from the Panama Law Firm of Mossack Fonseca, Mr. McKenna focuses on the damage to “every day people” that the overreaction to “tax evasion” creates. He likens the war on “tax evasion” to the “war on terrorism”. Regardless of the “collateral” damage, governments in general, and the United States in particular, seem oblivious to the damage caused to “every day folk”. I was delighted to see both Mr. McKenna and the comments, focus on the problems of FATCA and how FATCA punishes those whose ONLY crime was being “Born In The USA.” Those born in the USA are presumed to be “tax cheats by birth”.

Mr. McKenna’s article includes:

The fairness and integrity of Canada’s tax system depends on authorities doing their best to minimize the leakage. Canadians may grumble about paying taxes, but they’re likely to be more compliant if they believe their neighbours are also paying their fair share.

But repatriating all this revenue is not without costs – financial and otherwise. In its recent budget, the federal government said it will spend nearly half a billion over five years to give the Canada Revenue Agency more personnel and resources to combat tax avoidance (the legal kind) and tax evasion (the illegal kind). The CRA will spend cash to collect cash.

There are other inherent tradeoffs in any tax crackdown, including potential intrusions on privacy and individual freedoms.

The extent of those trade-offs depends on how targeted the crackdown is. It’s not unlike the fight against global terrorism.

Authorities can impose sweeping security measures on everyone to stop the few, or it can target suspected individuals through better intelligence.

Just look at the U.S. approach to fighting tax evasion. The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, is one of the most sweeping and intrusive regimes ever put in place. The law is based on the idea that if the Internal Revenue Service can locate every dollar Americans (and dual citizens) have stashed away anywhere in the world, they can also tax it.

And they’ve bullied virtually every developed country to help them in the effort, including Canada, where taxes are generally higher than in the United States.

The crackdown has forced thousands of Americans living in Canada to spend small fortunes to come out of the shadows, even though they owe little or no taxes. They include so-called accidental Americans, whose only crime was being born in a U.S. hospital.

Given the paucity of information that will be given by the US to its IGA “reciprocal” partner, it seems obvious that many non-US persons will continue to feel quite secure in holding accounts at US financial institutions, despite FATCA “reciprocity” with their home countries. This could be a nice boon to the US financial market in the brave new world of financial transparency! Is it possible? Is FATCA actually poised to help the (holier-than-thou) USA to become an even more enticing tax haven?

In her insightful article about the “Panama Papers“, Ms. Hendy opines that:

So tonight’s PBBC Panarama? programme on the ?Panama Papers was a total yawn.Besides the tepid reporting and comical ‘stings’ on a couple of people whose names turned up in the leaked files there was not much else to recommend it.

However, the post BBC news clip about the leaks which featured the now, well-worn innuendo about independent small state international financial centres, the sound bite by the Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration who has some oversight in the work of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, and Automatic exchange of Information (the new standard) did shed some light on what, to my mind, is the bigger question..Why Now?.

The other by-product of the Panama Papers was to perhaps inadvertently provide further support for the US position that it will not exchange taxpayer information with countries that can’t ensure that the information they exchange won’t fall into the wrong hands.

Interesting then how these ‘leaks’ reinforce the post-AEOI competitive advantage of some countries which is not based on secrecy per se but on protecting their taxpayers from inadequate confidentiality safeguards in the state receiving the automatic transmissions of information.

It appears that more than one commentator is of the opinion that:

the United States is not playing nicely in the (international) sandbox.

The question that needs to be asked is, how long will this scam go on, with every government being totally aware of the duplicitous corrupt behaviour of the U.S. being at the forefront in the arena of tax havens and then getting other governments to obey U.S. FATCA commands, extort their own citizens, all to assure that the U.S. remains the most important tax haven and financial secrecy jurisdiction in the world? That is what every government leader who perpetuates this outrage on their own nation’s economy and on their own citizens needs to be asked and confronted with, and very fast.

It will go on as long as there has been tax evasion. It is easier to harass honest law-abiding taxpayers with limited resources to fight back than it is to go after the real Fat Cats who have massive resources to hide their sleazy practices.

Despite US is the biggest obligant in the world, the index of S&P increased since the bottom of 2008 to it’s last peak by higher rate than did parallel leading indices in other countries stock exchanges. And the S&P also decreased by smaller rates (since the last summer peak) than did other parallel leading indices around the world. Now i understand why.